Lengths of flexible tubing such as small rubber hoses are used in many applications such as the automotive industry. In such applications, the hoses are often required to fit within confined spaces such as the area under the hood of an automobile. The hoses are accordingly designed with a number of acute angle bends. These acute angle bends can be formed in the hose by forming the green extruded hose into the acute angle bend with a mandrel and curing the hose to set the shape. Care must be taken in this curing and forming process to ensure that the hose does not collapse that the flow characteristics of the hose are not impaired. An alternate method of forming the acute angle bends is the process of bending the green hose around a bar and curing the hose in that condition.
Subsequent to the curing operation, the mandrel must typically be removed from the tubing and the tubing then cut to length. Where multiple bends are required in a particular hose, multiple hose segments are typically formed and are joined together with connectors in a straight or elbow configuration.
It is evident that the necessity of using curing operations utilizing a mandrel or bar especially in the case of multiple formation of hoses, is relatively expensive. In addition, it can be seen that the assembly costs necessitated by multiple formation of hoses is typically relatively expensive.
Another method of forming acute bends is by cutting the hose into segments and joining the segments with a conventional molded plastic conduit. This method involves an assembly operation which is somewhat time consuming and expensive.